


A Thread That Has No End

by AvaRosier



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:14:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6139429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaRosier/pseuds/AvaRosier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia Martin was twenty-one when she got her soulmark, and she had to wait six years before she finally met her soulmate. </p><p>(This is a fact she will remind Steve of, frequently.)</p><p>(Steve will decline to remark that he flew a plane into an ice shelf without a set of words on his body. Or that he had to be frozen for nearly seventy years in order to meet her.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 Lydia Martin had a complicated relationship with her sanity.

 

When her tendency to scream literal bloody murder meant she had to rent a loft apartment in a comparatively deserted part of the city just so she wouldn't have the cops called on her every time her Banshee senses tingled, instead of a nice, overpriced one-bedroom without a washer/dryer/dishwasher, she was damn well going to be _irritated_.

 

It was a lovely spring night and Lydia was out late on a Friday, but not because she was hitting up a club or otherwise having something that vaguely resembled a life. She'd felt the familiar buzz and pull in her bones that told her someone was going to die. So, come eleven p.m. when everyone was still out in the city for dinner or starting to head for the clubs, she was following her instincts to a construction site in the East Village.

 

It was too late for the buff, thirtysomething man with the military buzz-cut who had most certainly been thrown from the open apartment building still under construction. His eyes were still open and Lydia tried to ignore her nausea as she studied the scene around the body for clues. She was hardly a detective or a forensic pathologist, but Lydia had picked up on a few things.

  
  


His neck had been snapped before he was thrown and there were already contusions forming on his face from a physical alteration. His knuckles, too. She proceeded to stroll around the area, letting the flow of electrostatic waves roll over her body. There was a loose cable dangling in the breeze, attached to a lamppost, the hiss of electrical sparks just audible enough to amplify the messages from the other side.

  
  


It was risky, but Lydia headed into the incomplete apartment building, following the tracks the way Malia had insisted she learn how, back when she was having a difficult time dealing with Lydia moving away. They took her to the third floor. Peering over the edge, Lydia arrived at a singular conclusion. For a dead body weighing roughly two hundred and forty pounds to have been thrown that far away at this height? Either the killer was supernatural, or he/she was simply stronger than the average human being.

  
  


Since she had moved out east, Lydia had gradually built a rapport with twenty people, either supernaturals themselves or humans 'in the know', all from various walks of life including law enforcement, whom she could turn to for help when the need hit. She fished her phone out of her jacket pocket and scrolled down through her contacts before she hit the one labeled 'Matt'.

  
  


Matt Murdock was another fellow do-gooder who, while not supernatural, had some special abilities of his own. They'd run into each other once or twice and he'd convinced Lydia to let him help her out. It was a brief call and Matt promised to get a deputy he knew and trusted to check out the development, thereby coming across the body and calling it in. Lydia ended the call and headed towards the subway so she could head back home. It was a good thing she had a decently paying job else she wouldn't be able to afford to run around the city dealing with dead bodies.

 

Since she didn't have this strong of a reaction to every single death in a city of millions, it meant that this particular dead body meant something, something important enough that she was going to be spending too much time wondering what supernatural shitstorm might be descending upon her in the near future. Lovely.

  
  


So, yes, Lydia had a complicated relationship with her sanity.

  
  


Her relationship with her nascent Soulmark was even more complicated.

 

When it came to the soulmate phenomenon, Lydia was of two minds. There was one part of her, the part she kept secret from nearly everyone she knew, that was an incurable romantic; this part of her wanted to find that person who complemented her (but not completed her) and to whom she could be open and vulnerable, loved. This was the part of her that watched The Notebook over and over again, ad nauseam.

 

The other part of her, arguably the biggest part, was rather cynical about it all. First, she was a teenager, then she was a young woman with Goals and the last thing she wanted was to feel the pull of another person who would derail her ambitious academic and career plains.

 

As it were, she didn't get her words until she was twenty-one years old and just starting her grad program at Princeton. In her early teenage years, in spite of her reservations, Lydia had lied to her friends and said she had them, but in a rather awkward location. Her relationship with them had been rather shallow, so they swallowed that lie easily. Of course, that was before she knew there were people around her who could hear her heartbeat stutter when she lied. Scott, thankfully, never said anything.

 

By the time she was having Girls' Night with Kira and Malia, Lydia didn't bother lying in the presence of the latter. Given everything that had happened with Peter, with threat after threat, and with the discovery of her supernatural orientation...Lydia decided to simply be grateful she didn't have a soulmate.

 

The words, when they came, at least appeared in a spot easy to keep hidden. She'd seen them in the full-length mirror one morning as she got ready for classes. There, along underside of one breast, had been the small, well-spaced lettering announcing: “ _Short and unkempt? That's surprising_.”

 

As you may imagine, Lydia was very disappointed and more than a little insulted. She finally gets her words, and  _that's_  what they say? Yes, she understood that she was lucky they were very specific instead of something prone to false positives like “hi” or “excuse me”. And to think Lydia went to great lengths to make sure she looked fashionably put-together...goodness knows she wore heels more than was deemed healthy by numerous medical articles in an attempt to not seem so short.

 

When she had seen the words that morning, Lydia's skin had grown clammy and she'd been in a daze the entire day. Not that she let it derail her in the slightest. Except to spend days obsessively researching variations in soulmark resurgences to try to figure out why on earth it was showing up now instead of when she was younger. Unless she was going to be one of those older single women who scandalized people with her much younger, boy-toy of a soulmate (or girl-toy, as it were), Lydia was at a loss.  

 

Instead, she threw herself into school and work with renewed vigor.

 

Being a part of Scott's pack had left an indelible impact on Lydia, so much that she found herself brimming with ideas about how to take advanced math and apply it to making the world a better place. And from Allison, she had adopted her code, " _Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes_."

 

That had gotten her an internship with the Maria Stark Foundation the summer before she was set to graduate. Combined with several well-received papers had brought her to the attention of Stark Industries and a job offer developing new sources of clean energy before she had even graduated.

 

Lydia hadn't been about to look the gift horse in the mouth, and she had accepted, not wanting to stay in academia or teach. She really didn't have the temperament. Malia had surprised her by sending her a PowerPoint trying to convince her to move back out west. The main argument had been “ _New York City is a beacon for alien attacks, and therefore more dangerous than Beacon Hills, so why bother_?” Lydia had been flattered but resolute.

 

There was a part of her that feared Beacon Hills would make her lose her mind the way her grandmother had.

  
  


Any anticipation she had about meeting her soulmate evaporated as absolute dread pooled in her stomach. Whoever they were, Lydia decided to prepare herself to reject them right off the bat. Danny, bless him, had erased all digital footprints of her stay in Eichen house, but anyone who looked closely at Beacon Hills would only end up with a lot of questions- the last thing she wanted.

 

There were probably millions of blog posts online dedicated to the complexes that soulmarks gave people.

  
  


The first time she went home for a visit after finding her soulmark, Scott had sat her down on the creaky porch swing behind Malia and Kira's house where they were celebrating the latter's graduation, and he'd reminded her that one sentence did not provide context nor did first impressions have to decide the tone of an entire relationship.

  
  


Lydia had listened to the sound of cicadas and tugged Scott's arm up over her shoulders so she could tuck her head into the space between his chin and his shoulder. Scott hadn't heard his words yet, either, though he'd had them since he was little. He was busy back over at UC Davis, working his way through a Veterinary program.

  
  


“What if they see what I am, and they're disgusted. I can't do this, Scott.” She told him, her voice tight. “If that person is supposed to be my soulmate, I don't want them to see me as a monster.”

 

The wail of a Banshee didn't just signal death, nor was it only a scream of pain or fear; it could also be an instrument of death, a scream of rage. She's killed with her voice before, felt it clash with the vibrations of everything around her and shatter skulls. Only as a last resort, yes, but Lydia was fully aware that she was a thing to be feared.

 

“They won't,” Scott reassured her, and the certainty in his voice made her want to cry. Times like this, she felt the sheer distance between her and her pack.

 

“How can you possibly know that?”

 

“Lydia, remember all the times I was afraid I was turning into Peter or Deucalion? Of being a monster? Do you know what got me through that? Your faith in me.”

 

She did start crying then, remembering the stench of gasoline, the feeling of desperation, and the sickening trickle of Peter's voice invading every corner in her head.

  
  


“If you won't have faith in yourself, then know I believe in you.” His conviction was a balm for her worried mind. The conversation tapered off into lighter topics, the two of them getting the other caught up in their lives and their pack mates' lives.

 

Lydia tried to let herself hope that things wouldn't end badly because of the hand fate was determined to deal her. But this was at the root of all her fears. She just didn't want her soulmate to see her as something lesser, or something horrifying.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The Friday one week after finding the dead body was a cool, rainy April morning and so Lydia decided to indulge her need for a caramel macchiato on the way to work. She was looking forward to finishing her latest project that day before heading home for a relaxing weekend, and she was emulating Pepper Potts very well, she thought. She might not have designer pumps on, but they were doing some pretty amazing things for her legs. That, along with the tailored tweed pencil skirt and powder blue blouse, meant she was looking smashing. Her hair remained cooperative in spite of the humidity, and she had wrangled the long length into a complicated braid over the front of her shoulder.

 

She managed to make it to the Tower without getting her outfit splattered with mud, which heralded good things for the day. The other math and science nerds in the office seemed a bit preoccupied, heads bent together to share some gossip in hushed whispers. Lydia, for once, paid them no mind, more focused on making the established older male mathematicians cry when she demolished their proofs with her own.

 

She finished it all before the last dregs of her coffee went cold. Knowing that the rest of the afternoon could be easy going after she typed the results up and sent them to her boss, Lydia had decided to change out of her lab coat and go for a long lunch. She hit the security release for the door and started to saunter out into the hallway, only to stop short and stare at the man kneeling before her.

 

He was tiny and skinny, with short blond hair and a bony, but attractive face. Great cheekbones, strong lines in his jaw and nose, Lydia had the thought as she took in the too-big button-down, the baggy dark jeans, and the shoes the man was bent over to re-tie.

  


She saw him freeze mid-knot, turn his head, and his gaze slowly drift up the line of her bared legs, long eyelashes fluttering before he met her assessing gaze. The defiant challenge in his blue eyes sent warmth skittering through her belly, making her shift her weight from one leg to the other, cocking her hip to one side and sticking her hands there as she arched one eyebrow at him.

 

“ **Now, this is how I like my men** ,” she drawled playfully.

 

The man stiffened, his mouth drifting open with shock. Before the rest of her brain caught up with her, he was scoffing, shaking his head and then looking back up at her. “ **Short and unkempt? That's surprising**.” He sounded more than a little bitter, then.

 

Lydia drifted out of the pose she had been in, face slackening as she looked at him. Really looked at him. “Huh. So you _were_ being self-deprecating. I thought you were just going to be an asshole to me.”

 

She stared at him with new eyes, now that she knew who he was. Sort of.

  


The man gaped at her, frowning as he pushed up onto his feet with some effort. Standing up, he was marginally shorter than her in heels. Lydia felt like she was in a trance as she resisted the urge to reach out and touch him. What would she do if she touched him, she didn't know. Pet him?

 

“Oh. Well, sorry, I guess? My name is Steve.” He stuck his hand out and Lydia took it gingerly, letting him pump it up and down twice.

 

“Lydia Martin. Hungry?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“I just came up with a mathematical proof that's going to make a lot of rich old white men cry, I thought I'd celebrate with lunch. You hungry?” She proposed, taking him in even more fully now that he was right in front of her. There was something vaguely familiar about him that she couldn't put her finger on.

 

She'd read plenty about the draw that soulmates claimed to feel when they first met one other. Naturally, being Lydia, she'd pooh-poohed it, dismissing it as confirmation bias of a sort. But now, standing in front of Steve, she thought she finally understood what people had been waxing poetic about for decades.

  


Steve glanced up and down the hallway before shrugging. “Sure, why not? It's not like I can do anything now.” There it was again, that bitterness. Lydia frowned but decided to wait until later to find out what that was all about.

 

They headed towards the bank of elevators, so in awe of what had just happened that they were mostly silent but sneaking curious glances at one other. Lydia parted ways with Steve, promising him she'd wait for him down in the lobby while he went up to grab his jacket. She ducked into the break room to grab her own raincoat and purse out of her locker.

 

She was strangely reluctant to let him out of her sight for too long.

 

Okay, she wasn't ignoring the big elephant in the room: he was so much smaller and more frail-looking than the average man. If you had shown Steve to her when she was fifteen, she would probably have shrugged him off and found some excuse to reject the bond out of hand. Nowadays? She looked at the intelligence in his eyes and the sardonic twist of his cupid's bow lips and decided she was intrigued.

  


Steve might be an apparent fashion victim, but nothing Lydia wasn't confident she could work with.

 

She barely managed to refrain from wearing a groove in the floor while she waited for Steve to make it down to the lobby. When he finally exited the elevators, exchanging an awkward nod with the security guards, she found herself breathing easier.

 

“So...” she began.

 

“So?” Steve cocked an eyebrow at her, hands stuffed in the pockets of his ginormous jacket. Hm, she thought to herself, the mystery deepens.

 

“Anything in particular sound good to you? I hadn't thought as far ahead as where I'd go for lunch.”

 

Steve tried to hide a grin. “I might. How long do you have?”

 

“Well, considering I'm about to hand my boss a great advantage over her nemeses, let's go with two hours,” Lydia told him, curling her arm around the bend in his elbow, not letting herself second-guess the urge. Steve did glance downwards at their arms as if he were surprised this kind of contact was happening. He recovered quickly, though.

 

“In that case, how about Ethiopian?”

 

She tightened her grip on his elbow. “Ethiopian? I've wanted to try it, but just haven't had the chance.”

 

The skies were still grey and cloudy, but it wasn't raining as they made their way towards Hell's Kitchen. Most of the trip was spent asking each other basic questions. Where are you from? What have you been doing? She found out that Steve was from Brooklyn and he'd worked for the Army before taking a job contracting for Stark Industries. She informed him she was from a small town in California and condensed her job description into something comprehensible to the non-mathematically inclined layperson.

 

They had barely sat down on the subway before Steve was scratching his head. “You don't recognize me, do you?”

 

Lydia frowned, scrutinizing him more closely. “Should I have? I think I would remember if we'd passed each other in the elevators or something.” It was driving her nuts how familiar he looked.

 

“I'm Steve Rogers...”

 

“Captain America?” Lydia hissed incredulously, aware of the presence of other people in the train car. “Are you telling me my soulmate is one of the most famous Avengers?”

 

Steve had the grace to look mollified, and now that Lydia knew, she could see the resemblance. She had been an excellent History student in high school, after all.

 

“Yep. Sorry to disappoint you, but...” He shrugged, tensing ahead of her reaction.

 

Lydia sat back against the seat. “Not disappointing, just surprising. I seem to recall something about a super-soldier serum, though.”

 

Steve furrowed his eyebrows and sighed deeply before he answered her. “Yeah, that did happen. But we ran into a mutant who somehow managed to undo the serum's effects. The doctors over at the Xavier Institute think it's temporary, so I'm just...waiting it out.”

 

They arrived at their stop and stood up to exit the subway. Lydia made sure to take her time heading up the stairs, having noticed how Steve was panting and breathing more shallowly with the effort.

 

Once they made it to the restaurant, they didn't have to wait before being shown to a table and handed a set of menus. Lydia wriggled in the chair and opened up her menu. “FYI, I'm not complaining about your current state. I get that you probably want your super-serumed self back so you can continue to fight the forces of evil or whatever, but I just wanted you to know I'm not complaining.”

 

Steve glanced at her over the top of his menu, cheeks twitching from the effort to not smile. “Noted.”

 

“Did I give you a complex?” She asked him after they gave the waitress their drink orders. “My words?” She clarified at his moue of confusion.

  


“Kind of. I mean, at first I thought it was great that my soulmate was okay with me the way I was, unless they were being sarcastic. Then after I met Erskine, I did wonder if my soulmate would only like me for my enhanced self.” Lydia was then reminded of her own fears in regards to meeting her soulmate, and realized that maybe they both understood one other on a deeper level already.

 

Lydia raised an eyebrow. “Prodigious luck that we met after you were cursed, then. Although none of your guesses about the context of my words were accurate.”

 

She was rewarded with the soft flush of pink in Steve's cheeks. “I like to argue that man's natural place is on their knees before me,” she informed him with a smirk. Steve had been in the process of sipping water through his straw, and at her addendum, he inhaled sharply, coughing.

 

When he finally got himself straightened out, Steve could only stare at her bemusedly. “Well, without the serum, I'm really at the perfect height on my knees, aren't I?” He quipped.

 

Lydia cocked her head to the side, impressed, and tried not to rub her thighs together at the rather racy mental picture Steve had just given her. “Touché.” Maybe fate really did have a good reason for pairing them together.

 

He saluted her with his water glass.

 

She hummed as she glanced over the descriptions. “So, what's good here?”

 

That was how she found herself splitting a platter of Doro Wat and Yebeg Alicha, three vegetables, and Injera with Steve. “With the super-serum, you would be eating this whole plate yourself, wouldn't you?” She asked him teasingly, licking her fingers.

 

Steve seemed a bit distracted before he finally answered her, ducking his head sheepishly. “Not even that. I usually eat twice that much, sometimes more.”

 

About as much as the average werewolf, basically. Lydia offered him the ghost of a smile as they finished the last of their meal.

  


“Where are my words on you?” She asked him, toying with the straw in her glass.

  


He made a gesture in the general direction of his torso. “On my ribs. Yours?”

  


“A little higher. Would it be too much to ask for a visual confirmation that it is our handwriting. Given the specificity of our words, statistically we shouldn't have a false positive, but I always did like certainty.”

  


Steve seemed to gulp down the last of his water before finally nodding. “So how do we...?”

 

Lydia glanced around, taking note of the signs against the far wall. “The restrooms are over there. Shall we?”

 

Steve seemed slightly scandalized by the proposition. Lydia stood up and bent over the table next to them, where an elderly couple were also sharing a meal. “Would you mind terribly watching our things for a minute?” She asked the woman and her wife.

 

“Sure, honey.” She said, winking at Lydia and Steve. “We'll be here for another twenty minutes, but I'm not sure that ought to be enough.”

 

Lydia snorted at the implication and sauntered away with a giggle, heading towards the hallway where the bathrooms were. She didn't bother with the women's room, and instead pushed her way into the empty men's room.

 

Steve was right at her heels, letting the door swing shut. He definitely looked more than a little scandalized when she turned to face him. “You do realize they think we're... fon- we're...” he stuttered.

 

Lydia raised an eyebrow at him. “Fucking? Yes I do, but I doubt we'll take long enough for it to be convincing. So?” She watched him expectantly.

 

Steve seemed resigned to accepting her audacity.

 

There was a pause where she wasn't sure he would show her, but then Steve was tugging his shirt over his head and letting it fall at his feet, leaving him in a white undershirt that was altogether too loose on him. That came off next and Lydia could clearly see the way he had clenched his jaw and rolled his shoulders back, daring her to have a negative reaction to what she saw.

 

Lydia zeroed in on the black ink along the protruding line of his ninth rib, on his right. It was her familiar handwriting, elegant and slanted to the right. She couldn't seem to help herself, barely breathing as she reached out with two fingers to trace the soulmark. Mouth slightly open, she ran her fingers along the warm skin there, feeling a sense of satisfaction, of ownership.

 

She had always enjoyed marking the people she was with.

 

Steve was shuddering lightly underneath her touch, gripping his undershirt so tightly. Lydia glanced up at him and their eyes met, both half-lidded and suddenly aware of how close their faces were. All at once, the air between them seemed charged. Lydia licked her lips. Steve's focus moved from her eyes down to her lips and then back up again.

 

She nodded sharply, trying to ignore the upswell of panic. She raised her hands to the buttons at the front of her blouse and began to unbutton them one by one.

 

“Lydia! Really, you don't have to-” Steve began to protest, reaching for her wrist. She batted him away with a pointed look.

 

“It's alright, quid pro quo, right?”

  


She meant for that to come out lightly, but Steve shot her a pained look. “You don't owe me anything.”

 

She only unbuttoned her blouse to the waistband of her skirt and pushed it to one side, revealing the ivory satin cup of her bra. She lifted the band of the bra, keeping her hand underneath so her breast wouldn't just pop out and give Steve an aneurysm. “Here. Your words.”

 

Steve dropped his hand to her bicep, the warm weight making her tingle throughout her body. Bending his head much as she just had, he studied his words for a long minute. The warmth of his breath wafting over her cleavage nearly made her eyes drift closed.

 

Then he was moving away, exhaling deeply. She took that as her cue to button her blouse back up, watching him with an uncharacteristic shyness. As if shaking himself out of a daze, Steve started to tug his shirts back on. “Looks like we're certain, then,” he murmured, watching her with something akin to wonderment.

  


“Yes,” was all Lydia could think to say. This was it, this was real. And she didn't have the faintest idea what to do next.

 

Lydia paused while he held the door open and stepped back out into the hallway. “I'm assuming you didn't have a soulmark before you ended up on ice.” That was perhaps too blunt a way to put it, but Lydia wasn't really one for mincing her words.

 

Steve let out a rueful laugh. “No, it was something of a surprise after I woke up.”

 

She could only hope that she'd have enough time to build something with Steve so he could trust her and not reject her for who, or what, she was. He followed her over to their table and they exchanged pleasantries with the couple who had watched their things before paying their bill and gathering their jackets. He didn't fight with her about splitting the bill, which Lydia considered another check in the 'pro' column. Not that she was keeping track.

 

“Walk you back to the Tower?” He asked, not bothered by the light rain that was falling. Lydia opened her umbrella, and then returned her arm around his own as they made their way back to the subway.

 

“That'd be lovely, yes.”

 

While the train car roared from stop to stop, Lydia prompted Steve to hand over his phone so she could add her details and she memorized his number so she could add it to her own contacts list. “You should call me this weekend,” she told him.

 

His eyebrows rose halfway to his hairline. “I should, huh?” The way he lilted his voice at the end of that sentence was almost playful. That and the twinkle of amusement in his eyes. Lydia placed her hands on top of her purse, in her lap, and nodded with mock seriousness.

 

“Hmm mm. If you don't, I'll just end up reading through several math journals, and that's just pathetic on a Saturday night.”

 

“Well, we can't have that,” Steve drawled. Lydia shook her head, lips pressed together to keep from grinning stupidly.

 

They reached their stop and exited the subway. From there it was a short walk to the Tower entrance. Right before they parted, Steve seemed to be amping himself up for something and Lydia got her answer when he ducked closer and dropped a peck onto her cheek.

 

“Have fun making grown men cry, Dr. Martin,” he told her in lieu of a goodbye.

 

“Oh, Captain Rogers, I will.”

 

* * *

 

 

“We can't tell Malia or Kira right away, you realize that?”

 

Lydia rolled her eyes even though Scott wouldn't hear it over the phone. “Duh, not with how hard they fangirl over the Avengers. Kira would be weird around Thor but Malia would probably get thrown in some kind of CIA-run black site for stalking Black Widow.”

 

There was an amused snort on the other end, then the faint static crackle of a sigh. “But you're okay with this? With who your soulmate is?”

  
  


She had barely lasted twenty-four hours after meeting Steve before she was trying to stem the flood of panic. It was hard enough knowing her soulmate was an Avenger, therefore close to Tony Stark, therefore her entire life would be subject to scrutiny...and with it, her pack's too. So, she had called Scott.

 

Lydia paused to contemplate the question. “I don't know how to answer that, to be honest. Most of my worry right now is about any connection he might make from me to you guys. I know he's super-powered, that his friends are accepting of mutants who aren't using their powers to harm people but...we've stayed out of the public eye and I don't want to be the one who exposes us all.”

 

Silence reigned on the line. “Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if we were.”

 

She almost didn't think she heard him right. “Scott?”

 

Another sigh. “Ignore me. I'm just wondering if it'd be harder for Hunters to come after us if we were in the open and accepted like mutants are coming to be.” Well, Lydia couldn't fault Scott for that line of thinking. It'd been a brutal few years for mutants before public sentiment in numerous countries had finally turned the tide. Frankly, she was surprised supernatural beings around the world hadn't already stepped forward to ride the wave in. But then again, maybe they were, disguised as mutants.

 

It had been easy when she was an independent woman who occasionally took on a lover because she could keep her life separate from theirs and never have to justify her disappearances when something came across the Frequency. What would she do if she wanted to spend more time with Steve? There was no way he wouldn't notice and, she suspected, little likelihood he would buy her excuses and lies.

 

Now, Lydia knows that she's not a bad person- she tries to help people much in the same way Scott does, much in the same way Steve does. But looking around her neatly kept apartment, scattered with photos of her friends, of her mom and her grandma- bits of homey touches that barely put a dint in all the empty space- Lydia began to accept the possibility that it wasn't just her soulmate's reaction she feared.

 

Her early years of high school had been full of her ruthlessly maneuvering herself into the upper echelons of the popular cliques. Yes, she'd loved Jackson, but it'd been a fairly shallow relationship, practically a cold war not much unlike her parents' marriage before the divorce. Allison... Allison had changed everything. She'd been this bright, warm light that had wormed her way into Lydia's tightly guarded heart. 

 

She's not sure, but sometimes Lydia thinks she loved Allison more than as a friend.

 

But that had been taken away from her. She didn't cut herself off from her friends afterward, yet she had gone back to treating men as lovers forever on the outside. Thinking about her soulmate in the hypothetical, after the words had appeared, had often come with vague fantasies of that Allison-warmth. Of letting people in close again.

 

No, it wasn't just her soulmate's reactions Lydia feared- it was the possibility that she would be too resistant to letting down her walls and screw everything up. 

 

 


End file.
